Five policemen were also injured when the workers demonstrating in demand of a wage hike and withdrawal of an alleged false case by the factory owners locked horns with police in a pitched battle.

As on 9:20 last night, the name of the dead worker in his early twenties could not be ascertained.

Witnesses said a few hundred workers of FM Sweater Factory of SQ Group at Mauna Channapara in Sreepur went on strike from yesterday to drive their 10-point set of demands home.

Their major demands of the factory management were a pay hike, release of two co-workers now detained by police and withdrawal of what they alleged a false case against some 80 others.

As the management rejected their demands, the striking workers launched a demonstration inside the factory compound at about 8 in the morning, witnesses said.

The management called in police, who locked the factory's main gate.

Furious, the demonstrators came out of the factory compound scaling the boundary wall. They gathered on the nearby Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway and tried to block it, leading to a skirmishing between the workers and police. The two sides chased and counter-chased each other for a while.

During the clash, police fired several rubber bullets and tear gas shells.

Some 200 workers including Mahtab, 22, Asad, 25, Abul Hossain, 23, Habibur Rahman, 26, Manjurul, 23, Maruf, 25, Razzak, 19, Nazimpuudin, 20, Suruj, 20, Amzad, 22, and Harun, 23, were injured. They were later admitted to local hospitals and clinics.

On the other side, Nayek Bashudev and constables Harun Ur Rashid, Rajib Kumar, Abul Hossain and Abul Kashem were wounded as the agitated workers pelted brickbats on them. They were undergoing treatment at Gazipur Sadar Hospital last night.

With tension mounting rapidly, the garment workers at about 1pm went on a rampage, damaging vehicles and ransacking the factory building, besides continuing with pelting brickbats at police, witnesses said.

It was when police opened fire, hitting one of the workers standing near the factory entrance. Witnesses said police dragged away the body, put it in a sack, and hid it in a second-floor warehouse of the factory.

At 5pm Gazipur police super Atiqul Islam handed over the bullet-hit body to the workers. Witnesses said a bullet went through his right chest.

A number of workers alleged police opened fire on them at about 2pm from inside the factory without any provocation, when the situation was getting calm.

The police super said during the incident Additional Police Super M Mafizuddin and Sreepur Police Station Officer-in-Charge were present at the spot. "I don't know who ordered to open fire," he told the press.

After the incident, Director Mohiuddin and officials of the factory disappeared from the area locking the factory gate.

The workers became involved in a dispute with the factory management on May 11, when they raised a 10-point set of demands including proper salary and end to repression on them.

On that day, some knitting section workers allegedly assaulted some officials. Mohiuddin filed a case with Sreepur Police Station naming three workers as the main accused of the assault and 80 others as accomplishes.

Later police arrested knitting operators Aminul and Mujibur Rahman.